Shifting Challenges in Teacher-Education Research and Accreditation: Lessons Learned from Limitations on Studying Program Impact

ABSTRACT

A critical issue in educator preparation is how to ascertain if program graduates are sufficiently prepared to be effective through the acquisition of meaningful evidence of graduates’ impact on their students. Challenges to proving specific impact of educator-preparation programs on student learning include identifying and following program completers as they move into diverse teaching environments. Barriers include lack of access to measures such as students’ achievement scores and work samples. This article puts the research on educator-preparation-program accountability into perspective and provides a discussion about whether or not we have the capacity at this moment in time to access meaningful data about and proof of teacher impact.     

Verbal discussions about social problem-solving between friends and non-friends

In the field of developmental social psychology there is a consensus concerning the social nature of intelligence. In spite of the important empirical investigations in this field over the last fifteen years, the influence of the quality of a relationship on joint problem-solving and learning is still poorly understood. This explorary study investigated the influence of socio-affective context on the interactive modalities surrounding social problem-solving discussions conducted with 32 dyads of 8-year-old Swiss francophone children. Sociometric interviews with children and teachers were carried out to identify the following naturally-ocurring socio-affective contexts: reciprocal friendship (RF), asymmetrical friendship (AF) and reciprocal absence of friendship (“reciprocal non-friendship” RNF; excluding enemies). Comparisons of verbal exchanges and dyadic performance across the three groups suggests that reciprocal friendship facilitates collaboration and the organization of collective work. Two rival hypotheses opposing socio-affective proximity (reciprocal friendship) and socio-affective distance (asymmetrical friendship and reciprocal absence of friendship) are discussed with respect to the influence of social interactions on social problem-solving.     

Deal‐making and rule‐breaking: behind the façade of equity in academia

A glass ceiling for women still exists in academia after two decades of equal employment opportunity (EEO) legislation in Australia. There are complex factors that when combined make gender inequity in the higher education sector highly resistant to change. Using personal histories as a reflexive device, the paper makes explicit the embedded male patterns of behaviour in academia that operate beneath the façade of policies and rules put into place to counter inequity. In particular, the paper focuses on the cognitive dissonance individuals experience due to the disparity between formal organizational policies promoting equity, such as workload allocations, and perceptions of the unequal opportunities for women and men. Using social identity theory and the leader member exchange (LMX) framework, the daily experiences of three academic women are interpreted, the impediments to equality identified, and suggestions made for more fundamental change to gendered organizational structures within academia. The analysis of such behaviours shows that the traditional emphasis of EEO legislation on formal policies and procedures to bring about gender equity in academia needs to be accompanied by cultural change programs that make explicit and challenge behaviours that reproduce and reinforce male hegemony in academia.     

Bottling fog? The quest for instructional management

Elsewhere, the authors have unpacked instructional leadership and have documented that such leadership is associated with more effective schools. Indeed, there has been for a considerable time nearly universal acceptance that learning-centered leadership should provide the central platform on which leadership is enacted. In this paper, a less sanguine narrative is provided on instructional management. Specifically, it documents that for all the evidence and recognition of importance, learning-focused leadership remains a small domain of action for leaders at the school and district levels. It then focuses on both the culture of the profession of school administration and the nature of schooling to explain why in the face of considerable energy and effort only marginal improvements have been realized in deepening instructional leadership. It closes with an analysis of possible paths going forward.     

Students’ qualification in environmental and sustainability education—epistemic gaps or composites of critical thinking?

In an ‘age of measurement’ where students’ qualification is a hot topic on the political agenda, it is of interest to ask what the function of qualification might implicate in relation to a complex issue as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and what function environmental and sustainability issues serve in science education. This paper deals with how secondary and upper secondary teachers in discussions with colleagues articulate qualification in relation to educational aims of ESD. With inspiration from discourse theory, the teachers’ articulations of qualification are analysed and put in relation to other functions of education (qualification, socialisation and subjectification). The results of this study show three discourses of qualification: scientific reasoning, awareness of complexity and to be critical. The discourse of ‘qualification as to be critical’ is articulated as a composite of differing epistemological views. In this discourse, the teachers undulate between rationalistic epistemological views and postmodern views, in a pragmatic way, to articulate a discourse of critical thinking which serves as a reflecting tool to bring about different ways of valuing issues of sustainability, which reformulates ‘matter of facts’ towards ‘matter of concerns’     

Preservice teachers’ perceptions of an ICT-rich learning environment: Development of an instrument

This article reports the development of an instrument to measure preservice teachers’ perceptions of the Study Landscape (SLS), which is an ICT-infused learning environment that encourages preservice teachers to direct their own learning to build a two-way relationship between theory and teaching practice. This study comprised a qualitative and quantitative part. Six factors derived from interviews with users formed the basis of the instrument: (1) Support of Learners’ Initiatives; (2) Support of Information Searches; (3) Support of Interaction; (4) Relationship with Fellow Students; (5) Relationship with Teacher Educators; and (6) Relationship with SLS Staff. Once developed, the questionnaire was responded to by 186 students. Analysis of the data supported five out of six factors.